Create a Video Playlist for Your Home Workout (or Anytime!)

Do you miss the days when MTV actually played music videos and not Teen Mom? Yeah, us too. Morning music videos used to give me just the right combination of audio and visual stimulation for an early morning run on the treadmill. Nowadays, I recreate vintage MTV with a video playlist and an iPad. You can do the same with music videos, workout walkthroughs, or anything else on YouTube.

YouTube has video playlist functionality built into the site, so all you need to get started with a video playlist is a free YouTube account.

Set Up

Once you're signed in, head to the "watch" page of a video you'd like to add to the playlist. Click the arrow next to the + Add To button under the video you're watching, and choose "Add new playlist" from the drop-down menu. Type in the name of your new playlist and hit enter.

To add more videos, go to each "watch" page and click the arrow next to the + Add to button under the video you're watching. From the drop down menu, select the playlist you created to add that video to it.

The playlist possibilities are endless! You can create a stream of music videos, like we did, or a list of back-to-back workout tutorials, like stretches or yoga positions.

Play Back

Now that you're all set up with a custom video playlist, it's time to use it!

Unfortunately, the native iPad and iPhone YouTube apps don't support continuous playlists, meaning that you'll have to manually advance to each video in your playlist while you're working the elliptical.

To be able to play your clips back-to-back with no interruptions and without the need to click through each video, download the YTPlayer, an app reccomended by Digital Inspiration. It's a free app for iPad and iPhone that can access your public YouTube playlist and play back your playlist in "gapless" mode. You don't even need to provide your YouTube password.